USA Today Hits the iPhone

USA Today, the nation's top-selling newspaper, has announced that the paper is now available as a native iPhone and iPod Touch application in the Apple App Store.

USA Today, the nation's top-selling newspaper, has announced that the paper is now available as a native iPhone and iPod Touch application in the Apple App Store. The app lets readers browse headlines, share articles via e-mail or Twitter, and archive the stories for reading later on when there's no cellular signal, such as on a plane or in the subway. In addition, readers can scan through USA Today Snapshots and vote in interactive polls, with the results sorted by city and state. The usual allotment of sports scores, weather forecasts, and image slideshows are also available.

Native apps allow for faster performance and richer multimedia content (as opposed to simply creating a custom WAP page like iphone.facebook.com), since most mobile Web browsers don't support Adobe Flash and other more advanced Web technologies. But they're also harder to program, and quickly go out of date as newer, updated handsets and smartphone operating systems hit the market, sometimes rendering the old apps incompatible.

The USA Today application is available for free from Apple's App Store; visit www.usatoday.com/iphone for more information.